


Everything You Hate Me For

by Lucky107



Series: The Seventh Born [13]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Physical Abuse, Psychological Torture, flaying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 10:31:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14692353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: From her place on bruised and bloodied knees, Roberta can see everything.[AU Ending]





	Everything You Hate Me For

John Seed sits poised over a half-naked and shivering Nick Rye like a wild cat hungry for his next meal and, in that moment, the entire world stops.

From her place on bruised and bloodied knees, Roberta can see _everything_.

The knife in John’s hand glimmers in the fading afternoon sun, the reflection of which nearly blinds her where she kneels. She’s not blind to what comes next, though—or to the fact that she’s the only one who can stop it.

John doesn’t care about Nick Rye.

He targets Nick in a sick and merciless game of psychological punishment because he knows just how deeply cutting into him will cut into Roberta. He intends to bury the blade in to the hilt, just to hear her scream. He’s proven himself time and again: he won’t stop until she bends.

“ _Enough!_ ” Roberta hollers, hoarse and at her wits end. The world springs back to life in that moment. “I’ll confess.”

John turns his leering smile from Nick to Roberta, the knife still firm in his hand, but she doesn’t flinch. She knows she isn’t going to die here, kneeling on the church floor. Not by John’s hand, not if he can help it.

That would be too easy.

“There’s a smart girl,” he says, his voice disturbingly serene. “Please, indulge me.”

Roberta’s strung tighter than a bow as John stalks her. Each step he takes achieves its intended effect: a sharp flinch, an undisguised shot of raw nerves.

“I… I joined the Hope County Sheriff’s Department to help people. _Save_ people. Reckoned I couldn’t do it sitting behind a desk, so I fought for my badge. Ain’t saved a single soul since I put on this cheap piece of tin, though. Everywhere I go, everything I touch—it all turns to ash,” she confesses. “But not this time.”

John only stops once he’s directly in front of her and, using the tip of his razor-sharp knife, he tilts her chin upwards. “Oh?”

“You’re gonna let these people go,” she says and she swallows thickly against the pressure of the knife. The skin breaks just enough to draw blood. “You’re gonna let Joey Hudson and these fine people leave Hope County, _alive_.”

“ _You’re_ in no position to be making demands—”

“In exchange, I’m yours.”

John enters into serious deliberation over her proposal, coming to mental blows with himself over everything he’s been taught by Joseph. It’s a moral conflict between John Seed and John Duncan. Their eyes never part; he’s searching for something deep within her and she prays he finds it.

It’s no secret that her offer is the only chance either of them have at escaping Hope County alive. She’s heard the message that Joseph left for him. His _prophecy_. John has, too. Their future is completely intertwined.

If he doesn’t submit to her demands now, he won’t live to be an old man. Joseph’s prophecy is coming true and he has the power to stop it.

All he has to do is say _yes_.

“But first, you must confess.”

“Confess?” Roberta echoes, her disbelief painted on her face. “But I already said it, didn’t I? I was _wrong_. Everyone who’s died, both mine and yours, they’re dead ‘cause of _me_. What more can you—?”

John flips the knife downwards in one swift motion and flays the skin of her sternum clean off.

Roberta screams.

“ _Confess!_ ”

Once the screaming tapers off into a sickening rattle, she’s left wheezing and sputtering at his feet like a stuck pig. She’s unable to defend herself against the pain with her arms bound behind her back and she’s unable to ignore the burning that rips through her body like fire.

There’s no way she can possibly muster the voice to speak—to _confess_ —while enduring such raw agony.

With a little more urgency in his voice this time, John says, “Something to stem the bleeding, please.”

Three men come forward at once with an assortment of dressings to patch her up with. Nothing they provide can take away the blinding pain she feels, but they dress the injury with just enough finesse to keep her alive.

“ _Fuck_ ,” she bites out between pained grunts. A low, guttural sound escapes her as she subconsciously fights against her restraints. She’s only wearing herself out.

“Ah,” John chides. “You should really watch that pretty little mouth of yours, my dear. You’ve been cleansed of your sin— _years_ of past indiscretions, forgiven by the will of the Father. I understand: with all that blood lost, you’re probably delirious right now. But _don’t_ ruin this. For _their_ sake.”

Roberta’s eyes flicker between John and Nick.

“Seventeen years. That’s how long I’ve waited to see you repent,” he lectures and he takes one, two, three loud steps until he’s standing directly behind her. “Your wrath has left quite a trail of destruction in its wake, but all of that ends today.”

But the full extent of the damage done could never weigh solely on her shoulders, she knows. Joseph Seed is responsible for far more death and destruction in Hope County than Roberta could ever be.

His decision to relocate to Hope County in order to inflict it was no coincidence, however.

That decision was made through the whispers of John Duncan. His own wrath spilled from his thoughts and into his actions. It was John’s wrath that brought them to this moment—not Roberta’s.

“I—” Roberta begins, but the thought is lost to the pain of John grabbing her hair and yanking her head back.

“Speak up, girl!”

“I _never_ hated you,” she manages between grit teeth. When she turns her eyes upward, they’re cold and completely defiant. She looks fifteen again. “There was never any… any _wrath_ , any _malice_ towards you. It was just… just some dumb kid’s foolish pride.”

“ _Pride_?” John scoffs, giving her hair another rough pull. “Don’t be coy. Pride is what you _stole_ from me.”

“We… we were _fifteen_ , John.”

“ _Children_ ,” he corrects, placing a large booted foot against her naked back in order to force her to the ground. Roberta chokes out a mangled scream as the change in pressure reignites the fire in her chest, tears stinging at her eyes. “And you _betrayed_ me.”

Strong hands take hold of her—her head, her shoulders, her arms—and force her nose to the floor. Her bare back is a blank canvas and John wastes no time sinking his knife into the freckled skin between her shoulder blades.

There’s no ink this time.

It’s a brand.

He carves into her relentlessly until he reaches the curve of the D and then stops, the tip of the knife still embedded within her flesh.

“Are you _crying_?”

\- - -

Roberta awakens to the tickle of straw against her cheek.

She bolts upright in horror, pulling the buttons of her flannel shirt free to inspect the tanned skin below. Its smooth and freckled, free of ink or scars. Her cheeks are warm with the memory of tears, but completely dry to touch.

It was just a dream.

Just as the adrenaline begins to settle, John pokes his head up over the ladder. His cheeks flush a brilliant shade of red at the sight of her, shirt unbuttoned to the belly and pulled wide open. “Y-you’re certainly eager.”

“You stop it with those dirty thoughts of yours, Mr. Duncan.” Roberta teases him, but she pops the last two buttons open before she leans back on her elbows and invites, “Now, get over here and help me with these buttons.

 

“ _Oh_ ,” Roberta murmurs. John doesn’t last thirty seconds against the warmth and familiarity of her calloused hand, and the shame of it burns him alive. “Guess I wasn’t the only one eager to please…”

But John’s face is as red as a tomato and his eyes are damp with tears.

He’s humiliated.

In that moment, the entire world stops.

Roberta has always known exactly what it is that John sees in her: it’s exactly what she _wants_ him to see, the Roberta Caine that he _thought_ he had fallen in love with five years ago. It’s five years of weeding out the blemishes to maintain that façade.

The Roberta that John had fallen in love with was nothing more than an intricate web of lies.

 _That_ Roberta could talk the talk—and had, in fact, talked _a lot_ of talk in the months leading up to this moment—but every word to come out of her mouth had been another well-spun lie. She had never been with a boy before, but she needed John to believe that she was _his_ Roberta. Fast, loose, _cool_.

Tension blankets her daddy’s old barn like a heavy snow.

For the first time in five years, John is asking Roberta to find a single word of truth in her heart.

But a single word is all it will take for five years of lies to come unravelled and Roberta’s not sure she’s strong enough to face that reality.

Could John Duncan find it in his heart to love the insecure and inexperienced fifteen-year-old Roberta Caine that exists at the heart of her web? How could she even expect him to, when she couldn’t love herself?

At the realisation, a guttural laughter escapes her—it’s as cold and hollow as the fading autumn sun.

The world springs back to life in that moment and John’s handsome blue eyes frantically search her face for redemption, broken.

“Are you _crying_?”

\- - -

Everything hurts: her head, her chest, her back, her legs.

Her heart.

The rest of the world fades into a blur: both John’s men and Roberta’s men, the cryptic Biblical verses scrawled onto the walls and all of the gore. Hot tears sting at her eyes and she continues to scream into the hardwood floor long after her voice has died.

That day in her father’s barn had been the last time she and John Duncan had words.

He left Hope County to attend Harvard at eighteen and Roberta swore that she would attend law school right behind him, if only to brush shoulders with him one last time and make amends.

But her father’s life ended prematurely that year and Roberta’s world was turned upside down. Everything prior to her father’s death became little more than a distant memory. Those memories became muddled with time and her heart’s desire to remember them as they should have been, not as they were.

Up until the moment she saw his face in that video, his fingers wrapped around the throat of Joey Hudson in a very personal and very intimate threat, she had no idea he had even returned to Hope County.

John Duncan had become John Seed.

But John Seed is a monster—a monster that she’s played no small part in creating, she knows—and she will never make the amends she had so long hoped for. The only thing she can ask for now is a chance to do better by the people in this room, the people who still stand a chance at finding their own redemption.

In the end, it really had boiled down to little more than one dumb kid’s foolish pride.

And her pride had cost her _everything_.


End file.
